Some thoughts on Jane Austen

So this week I've been reading a bit of Jane Austen. See, every now and then I descend into a mood where I just want to lounge on the couch in my underpants and have a good cry, and a few days ago a period drama film seemed like the perfect side dish to complement tears and snot dripping out of my nose.

It's healthy, I promise.

Anyway, I settled on "Mansfield Park," which turned out to be pretty enjoyable. Well, MOST of it turned out to be pretty enjoyable, except the parts that kept awkwardly insisting that the characters address the issue of Britain's role in the slave trade. I hadn't yet read "Mansfield Park," but I had to assume that this was a creative liberty taken by the screenwriter/director, an assumption which inspired me to read the book. Because, even though I'm all about the abolition of slavery, let's just be honest for a second: Jane Austen's books are about who danced with who, who eloped with who, and who violated some kind of code of propriety that you as a modern reader don't fully understand and need to have explained to you by the Internet--I'm not calling these books shallow (and in fact I would agree with those who say that Jane Austen seemed to deeply understand people's characters), I'm just saying that when you try to turn a Jane Austen book into a cinematic commentary on the slave trade, you're just מפגר.

Anyway, my point is that over the past few days I've been reading "Mansfield Park" and loving it. But I have two other points to make:

Here's what I'd do if the world really was going to end on 5/21

This morning I was driving around my hometown trying to find a Target that clearly had taken lessons in stealth and hiding from the town of Brigadoon when suddenly I stumbled across a billboard that announced that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011. I gotta say, it's a little startling to come across an announcement about the end of the world sandwiched between other billboards advertising "Rango" or the latest designer jeans, but ok.

Apparently a Christian radio station has taken upon itself the burden of informing the people of the world that their days are numbered. Well, presumably the days of their existence are numbered but infinite, because on May 21st they're gonna join the ranks of eternity. Therefore they're begging the people of the world to cower before God and ask for forgiveness, because eternity is a looooong time to be spending anywhere, let alone Hell. Then again, I'm not so sure an eternity in Heaven would be all that great either, because I get bored ANYWHERE, even Disneyland or the White House or a Bond villain's secret lair in a volcano, after about ten minutes. As a 10th grade/year 11 RE student in London once mused aloud...